Former Taipei Mayor Ko Wenzhe was sentenced to 17 years in prison in the first instance for his involvement in Beijing City and political donation cases and appealed. The High Court today summoned Li Wenzong, the former chairman of the Zhongwang Foundation, and Li Wenjuan, the former head of Muke Public Relations Company. Li Wenzong pleaded guilty to the crime of breach of trust earlier in the trial, but he still denied the crime of public welfare misappropriation. Unexpectedly, when the judge asked Li Wenjuan in the evening, she pleaded guilty to all charges. In an interview after the court, Li Wenzong said, "Now it is... a last resort...".
During his term of office, Ke Wenzhe and his old classmate Li Wenzong jointly used Muke Company and the People's Party political donation account to misappropriate more than 61.34 million yuan in the "Ke Wenzhe and President and Vice President Wu Xinying's political donation account" and misappropriated 8.27 million yuan of public funds from the Zhongwang Foundation to pay the salaries of campaign headquarters employees.
In the first instance of the political donation case, the Taipei District Court sentenced Ke Wenzhe to two years and three years and six months in prison for two counts of public welfare embezzlement. In the Zhongwang Foundation case, it was found that Ke Wenzhe and Li Wenzong were jointly guilty of breach of trust, and Ke was sentenced to two years and six months in prison. In addition to the crime of accepting bribes in violation of his duties in the Jinghua City case, Ke Wenzhe was sentenced to a total of 17 years in prison. Li Wenzong was sentenced to 4 years and June for public welfare embezzlement and breach of trust; Li Wenjuan was sentenced to 2 years and April for public welfare embezzlement and violation of commercial accounting laws; accountant Duan Muzheng was sentenced to 1 year in prison for forging documents.
After the case was appealed, the High Court opened a hearing today, which lasted nearly five hours from 2:30 pm to 7:21 pm. Li Wenzong's defense lawyer stated in court that Li Wenzong still refused to admit the crime of public welfare embezzlement. He pleaded guilty and advocated innocence, but changed his plea to guilty of breach of trust, admitting that he had misappropriated funds from the Zhongwang Foundation to pay the salaries of four employees, including "Orange" Xu Zhiyu, as well as Gu Min, Lin Baochun, Huang Xinxiang and others.
As for Li Wenjuan, the defense lawyer made the main statement in court. Her lawyer said that in order to avoid wasting judicial resources, Li Wenjuan decided to plead guilty to all relevant crimes, including the crime of public welfare embezzlement and violation of the "Commercial Accounting Law", and there would be no further disputes.
After the trial, Li Wenzong was stopped by the media for interviews. He was asked what opinions he wanted to express. Did he feel more relaxed after pleading guilty? Li Wenzong said: "No, it's a last resort! Now anyway, it's a last resort..."
According to current legal analysis, Li Wenzong's guilty plea will have a great impact on Ke Wenzhe and may put Ke in prison. How do you view this matter? Li Wenzong said: "I didn't think it would be like this, because the witnesses all told the truth, and it didn't seem to be much related."
As for whether he knew his sister would plead guilty, Li Wenzong said he didn't know and left quickly in the end.
